Caught Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets so the rest of you don't have to. Trust me on this.

Hmmm... Damn. (will probably walk into the fire anyway, because I'm a lemming)

Here's the thing: The movie sucks big time. The plot is incoherent, the two leads have no chemistry, and they try to make Dane Dehaan out to be some kind of studly heartbreaker type, but in reality he's got the physique of a 12 year-old girl and just doesn't have that "manly" persona that the film thinks he does. His performance is fine, as is Cara Delevigne's, but there's nothing for them to do except go through the motions.

Here's the real downer though. The film is gorgeous, but if you've seen the trailers, you've LITERALLY seen ALL of the eye-candy visuals. ALL of them. You could read a synopsis of the film, watch the trailers, and basically say you've seen it.

Ah shit, I was really hyped for this. How does it rate next to The Fifth Element ?

If 5th Element is an 8 out of 10, Valerian is a 4. There's really nothing memorable about it. 5th Element had Bruce and Milla, but Valerian doesn't have anything close to that in Dane and Cara. Visually, it's pretty stunning, but like I said, you literally won't see anything that you haven't already seen in the trailers.

There are some pretty neat concepts. The whole opening segment, where they show various nations meeting together in space and sharing a handshake, which extends further throughout time as the ISS becomes Alpha and the tradition is carried on with alien races is really well-done and thoughtful. There's a whole marketplace which exists in another dimension, and that concept was cool. Overall though, the film was just a miss.

I finally got around to "Moonlight" and want to make some notes, as I suspect I'll want to discuss these topics when I do my annual "Oscar-winning movies I watched this year" post.

I liked how it bent some rules of Hollywood storytelling. It's almost three smaller films in one than it is one movie. (The third segment in particular could function as a standalone short film all by itself.) And the protagonist is not what we would call an active character. For most of the movie, things happen to him rather than him taking action. (In the first segment, where Chiron is a child, I was reminded of a recent favorite of mine, "What Maisie Knew", about a little girl being acted upon by the sins of the parents; little kid characters in realistic movies ain't gonna have much power, are they.)

It's a movie about moments rather than what we might think of as an Oscarbait 'issues' movie. You're not going to get, I don't know, the big stirring speech with soaring music. The movie puts its characters there living largely quiet lives and makes you come to it.

I liked the occasional flourishes of a long moving take where the camera sort of weaved around and through a scene.

I was very impressed with Naomie Harris. I've considered her someone worth watching since "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story", and it's nice that the Bond movies gave her more exposure and such, but this is a damn good role well-played in a subtle fashion.

Oof yeah this sucked. It literally felt like a three-hour-long movie and was blown away to realize only two hours and ten minutes had passed. Some fun world-building but they just kept throwing new concepts at you until nearly the very end -- too much.
It's also clear that Besson, the writer, doesn't speak English as a first language.

Saw a film from a few years back called "Don't Think Twice" about a group of Improv comedians in their thirties dealing with the fall out from one of the group getting a bit of success.

Really enjoyed it because whilst it was a good drama the scenes of where the group perform comedy was actually funny and it really got the tone right. Kinda felt like the sort of indie flick that one of you guys might have made. But in a good way!

I finally got around to seeing Baby Driver on Sunday for Mrs Faldors birthday. I've been a fan of Edgar Wright since SPACED aired in '99 and once walked past him at Ealing Studios.

I was luke warm about the film when it was announced. To be fair, I'm not excited about many films these days, I'm just old I guess. This was a departure from Wright's usual comedic stylings and it works pretty well. It's both the most Edgar Wright-ish of his films and the least.

Baby starts out as a strong character, we see his physical scars as an introduction to his emotional ones but there isn't much going on below the surface. There is some divided opinion on just how relatable he is as a protagonist.

It's a fun film with good action but I did feel it came apart towards the end with the notable absence of a villain throughout the movie.

"Dunkirk" was amazing. I thought they did a great job of having a small group of soldiers as stand-ins for the hundreds of thousands there. Mark Rylance gave a great performance as always.

I know with every film someone makes the joke of a 'Cinematic Universe' but I'd love to see a shared world group of WWII films with the same actors playing the same roles across different projects, like how Michael Gambon has played George V in several projects.